Washington Square On-Air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor of for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with author Deanna Oudelha Whose piece I am humming. A Living Thing Woven into countless lives among many is in our Summer 25 issue. Hey there, Deanna.

Hi, Melissa.

So give us a little overview of your piece and let us know. How did you come to write it? All right.

So this piece actually is for how short it is. It's about 350 words. It took me a very long time to write it, but it's part of my graduate thesis, which I did on creative nonfiction, especially in language learning classrooms. So how to integrate creative nonfiction lessons into classrooms where people are learning English. And one way that this piece came about and the reason that it's a flash piece is because my thesis and what I work on is how to open up the gates from gate kept English gatekeeping. English is often being gatekeeping. That's an odd way to say gatekept.

I know what you mean. It is being gatekept. I understand.

So that academic or the elite standard English is often very difficult for language learners to grasp. And I feel that's unfair and actually unethical. So I really work on bringing things writing into smaller, more digestible pieces, mainly because I love English and I want people to know how brilliant English can be. When we grow up, when we are native English speakers, we kind of. We naturally learn how to play with English. But I want other people who are learning English for the first time to have that. That joy and that pleasure of playing with English. So while this piece seems complicated with the ideas, it's actually like a snapshot, a very small moment. So all of that comes together. How to really dive into a small moment in your life and dig into the beauty of English to describe that. And that's how this piece came about.

Okay. What was it like writing it? It was part of a broader project. Right. So at the time, did you know that it was its own little distinct piece? Or at the time, was it just part of a big thing?

At the time, it was me needing to add my voice to my thesis. My thesis was taking. And I apologize if I talk about it, but it all kind of comes together. My thesis really comes together with this, the idea of English and sharing English with others, language with others. So I was doing. I had a lot of pieces, five pieces, where I take academic texts and I simplify the language. So take it from like a college plus level reading. And I use a calculator, online calculator, to bring that down to a fifth grade level, which would work for the people that I'm thinking about, language learners that may or may not have dyslexia. So then, let's see. Because I was focusing so much on the academic texts, and this is a creative nonfiction, so I needed to put my voice into it. I started thinking about my own life and how to simplify moments that I experience and my social anxiety, sometimes my aversion to leaving the house. So, you know, I have these things that maybe sometimes when we, especially as educators, we often focus on our students more than ourselves. So creative nonfiction has really. I love it because it requires that the author examine themselves also. And so this took me a long time to write because it's not easy to write about myself.

Right.

But I had to do it. So that's.

It was a.

It was. When I look at it, I just think of all the time that went into it. Probably about three months went into writing this piece.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. As you say it is when you're doing that kind of scholarly writing, it's a different part of your mind. And then to switch over all of a sudden to try and write about yourself, it's almost like I'm still here. But I give us a little bit of background about this program that you were in. What kind of program was it and how did you get there?

About my graduate thesis. My master's.

Yeah, just like, what institution? Where were you? What was your program? That kind of thing.

Awesome. I will. So I live in Omaha, Nebraska, and I attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and I graduated in May with my master's degree in English. So the English degree here is kind of a generalist degree. And every instructor, every professor I had, they're very. While they don't always know it explicitly, they always assign work that is very creative nonfiction at its core. So a lot of exploring who we are, a lot of ethnography, things like that. So through this, through my professors, this, what could be just a very bland general degree really became something that opened my eyes to the world of self exploration and teaching that to others. So my graduate thesis is called Brilliant Not Dyslexia Assessments for Adult English Language Learners in the United States. And while that's long, it's very specific. I've worked with adult language learners here in Omaha, volunteering my time to teach English and my interest in dyslexia is that some of my students, maybe they study English for years and years and they just can't read. They still cannot read. And many countries where my students would come from, they don't test for dyslexia in elementary school, whereas in America we do. In the United States, we do. So I just began to wonder about the stigma and the stereotype that people who are learning English, their English is broken, which I abhor. I abhor that term. And when I would hear my students saying, my English is broken, and then it's like, I just thought I had to do something, I had to reverse that in some way. And so that's what. How. That's how this all came about from my professors and working with individual adults learning English. And that's. It's complicated. I might have to write a story about it someday.

Well, while you're talking, I'm thinking about the way that putting yourself into your own scholarship, you know, contextualizing yourself within your scholarly work, gives it much more meaning to you as a person. And I think it, to me, it makes the work more accessible to other people. When you explain, this is how I came to it, and then this is where I am inside it and what it looks like to me. I'm wondering about the idea of gatekeeping, because I agree with you that there is some guarding of the gates. Where in your work did that really start to impact you, seeing this happen?

Well, luckily, I'm going to school for free. I'm a teaching assistant. And so at uno, we don't just assist teachers, we actually lead our own classes. So in the first year writing program, where the teaching. We're actually teachers of record, where we teach, we are teaching our students about rhetoric, we're teaching them about creative and critical thinking. And so, yes, it was in the classroom. Because our first year writing program, we teach about the language. English is the language of power and having the tools that if we want to change, especially what we're doing is we're teaching new students, first year students how to do school, how to stay the four years, and how to give their professors what the professors want. And unfortunately, that can feel like we are betraying who we truly are. A lot of students come into my class saying, I'm not a good writer, I hate English, I hate writing. So that's what infuriated me. I have two children and I never let them think they were stupid or that they couldn't do something like that. Angers Me, when someone feels they cannot, they don't have the capacity to. To think or.

Okay, I can relate to that completely. Okay, good.

So I guess it comes from being of being a parent and seeing also so now working with these 19, 18, 19 year olds, 20 year olds coming in, who think I'm dumb, I'm stupid, I can't write, I can't express who I am, and nobody would listen to me anyway. I really wanted to reverse that. And luckily our program focuses on rhetoric. Who are we and how can we persuade others that what we have to say matters without betraying who we are? So that's what we do in our writing classes. And that's when I. So for two years I've been on this journey of just reversing. That's that I guess it's all people are brilliant and not broken, not just language learners. And so I apply the same, the same pedagogy I apply in my English language learning class. I also apply to my first year writing class. It's that confidence and that critical thinking ability that gets us where we want to be. It's even though English is a language of power and yes, it is being gatekept or it is a social mobility and you know, even moving up in life is being gatekept from us based on language. That doesn't mean that we can't still create our own way to talk with people and to get what we want.

So yes, absolutely. What about the students? When you're hearing them come to you with kind of like educational baggage, you know, messages that they've got, what are your first steps to kind of get them to step away from that?

In the first week of class, I show them a video by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and it's about critical thinking. And basically the idea is, who would you rather hire? Somebody that already knows the answer from a book or somebody that knows how to figure out the answer? And at the end, so I don't have a lot of specifics, but it actually comes from a college graduation address that he gave about 10 years ago. So I tell my students the first week, look, you are intelligent, you do have a voice, and I want to hear it. I respect them. Like when I ask them to turn their phone off, I turn my phone off also and let them know that. So it's an environment of respect and of working together. And I guess that's how I hope that makes sense. Melissa, the way I'm explaining it does.

Make sense because it sounds to me like you're putting more Emphasis on the critical thinking, creation of ideas. You know, tossing around ideas in your mind and reinforcing the notion that you are already doing the thinking. Right. And then getting the words on the page is just a way to express what you've been thinking. In other words, you're already doing the work.

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. I'm glad you understand.

Right. It really resonates with me because I've seen it as a teacher myself, and that makes sense. What kind of topics do you guys usually write about early in the semester? Because I'm wondering if you're trying to emphasize their own knowledge. Do you do a personal narrative or maybe write, you know, cultural writing? What kind of topics do you write about in class?

So the very first thing we write is a belief statement. And a lot of them have never written a personal belief statement. And many of them believe that it means religion. And so when we start talking about beliefs as not necessarily religious beliefs, but just that we have beliefs all the time, that's the first conversation we have about how to think about things that maybe we believed they were one way. For example, having beliefs. And then we now learn that there's a lot of different ways to have beliefs. I also tell my students that we have certain rules, because it's kind of like a technical writing class. How to write in a way that your professors will accept what you are writing. So you know the structure of writing. But I tell them I never grade them on their ideas. I never grade them on if I think, I tell them they're all brilliant. I love your ideas. I love what you're talking about, which I do. But that what we have to think about in this class is the. What I'm grading is the rubric. So I feel like that's how I connect with them. And what you asked was, what kind of writing do we do? So the writing is all creative nonfiction. So about what I'm thinking, what I think about the world, but it has to contain academic writing structure. So it's actually a fun. It's a fun, fun class. Students are really. Students feel. And I'm a student, so. And you were in school at one point. But when our heart goes into our writing, especially when we're talking about social justice issues, which is one thing we talk about and write about in my class. If a professor is to say that our ideas are wrong, that can just attack our identity. That attacks our identity. But if a professor were to say, okay, your ideas are yours, but the structure needs to be a certain way that removes it from the identity of the individual. I want to empower identities, not destroy them. So try to keep those two things separate.

Yeah, well, looking at the structure of it, the genre, methodology, how it's presented, where the thesis statement is, where the main ideas are laid out, to me, that's always an interesting way to talk about the work, because like you said, you're breaking it up into the concrete and the abstract. And looking at the concrete elements really does take kind of the emotion out of that part. And I think that. That just recognizing to a young writer that there are those separate pieces and the pieces are. Are separate and you can do different things with them. That's pretty. That's really empowering. A couple years ago, I took a creative nonfiction course, and we would have a lot of discussions about what exactly creative nonfiction is. How would you define it? That's a hard question. I know. So today, how would you define it today? Because you. Two days from now, you may think it's something else.

Yeah, that's funny, Melissa. So how do I define creative nonfiction? Creative nonfiction is any writing where a person or the author or the reader is asked to examine who they are and what they think about that and what they think about where they are. I believe an educator's pedagogy or lesson plans, rubrics on, are creative nonfiction. If the work is asking students to explore and examine who they are. If it involves conversing with other students, a human aspect of nonfiction, of the. Of the life, reality. And so a lot of my portfolio was a lesson plan that I created lesson plans. But I just feel so passionate about education and that it's. I'm not alone. I know I have to believe I'm not alone because a lot of people believe this. But the classroom is where human beings learn that we can be in a space together and be validated. It's all about validation and empowering. And the classroom is kind of like when you have your kids or you're in a car for a long time on a long car ride, you're stuck with me. You're here in this car for four hours. It's kind of the same. You have a classroom, and then what can we do with that time? So that's creative nonfiction for me. That's my definition, my five page definition.

Okay, that works for me. Because with your definition, you can still incorporate other people's voices, other people's ideas, information, statistics, all kinds of things. And as they come into the writing, then the author reflects and engages with them and responds to them exactly you get me, Melissa?

You get it?

Yeah, Yeah. I find that it's difficult sometimes to convince students that this is a real thing. Do you have that sometimes.

What do you mean that what is a real thing?

Creative nonfiction or situating themselves within their own research. Because I think a lot of times they've been told, you know, be objective, don't put yourself in the essay, don't use I. That kind of thing.

Yeah. So there are. Yes, there is that division. There is a huge division in English or writing composition classes. And I am on the side of progress, so I'm just going to be very. I am on the side of progress. And students love to write about themselves. Everything that we do on social media or if we're going to the movies, it all originates with something that inside of me. I'm saying, like a general me. Like, I want to do this. Let me instigate this and move so it's.

I hear what you're saying about. People like to write about their own experiences. But for me, a lot of times when I tell students, yes, you can use I in this essay that also has research and signal phrases and that kind of stuff. And a lot of times they come to me having been told that you're never supposed to show up in your own work.

Yes. Okay, so luckily I work in a university, not a high school or middle school. So we can. It's a different world.

Uh huh. But don't they come to you with those same, like, beliefs about the past?

Yes. So. But what I'm getting at is that I can say, forget all that. Forget that we are no longer in that world. That's why you are paying to be here now. And that's why I adore teaching at college level. Because it's just, just like you're free from that. I'm sorry that that happened to you. It's kind of like, I'm sorry that that is your. What happened to you. But now this is a new opportunity. You can do it. Even we teach, we teach one way to write, but I tell like one way to structure a paper. But I tell them, you know, this is, this is not the only way. I always like, emphasize it's not the only way. And I also emphasize, because I have been a substitute teacher in high school, I say, you know, they had 150 students. They were just trying to grade everything. You know, it's not them. It was not them. It was not you. It's kind of like a. And then one part of my pedagogy is every Time we learn something new. In this class, which is about every week, I always ask the students, they have to write a reflection on what they have already learned about it. So even if they hated it or I'm always asking them to draw from those past experiences, and I want to connect. I don't want to say, okay, that was wrong. This is right. I just want to say, what can we bring from that that will help us move forward? The past experience. So not to just negate everything that happened because of one or two bad experiences, but there is something to. We all bring some sort of knowledge with us into the classroom. And how to get that right there. That's how I do that. Melissa.

Yeah. They are on their own educational journey. They're in every moment. They're still on the journey.

Yes, yes. You got it. Absolutely.

That's. I mean, we're all in that same spot always on our own educational journey, now that I think about it. What grade did you teach? What grade did you teach? Well, I taught resource room elementary and then alternative High school.

Oh, yeah?

Yep. And now I teach here at lcc. I did also teach preschool. Have you ever taught preschoolers?

I like to. So just a little bit about me. I like to cuss, actually, not a lot. But I. I do find that speaking the same language as my students sometimes helps with that whole respect thing. So I like that. College is a little more freedom for teachers, I feel. Yeah.

Yeah. Although I did have a student once suggest we should have a swear jar in class when I was teaching at the alternative High school.

I believe that. It's hilarious.

I told him I feel like we've got enough rules to keep track of. We're not going to start.

That would have been funny.

Yeah, for sure. Teaching is its own educational journey. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit before we kind of wrap things up. Tell us a little bit about your own writing right now. What kind of things are you working on, personally?

So what I love to do, Melissa, is I love to write experimental found poetry.

Hmm.

I like to take pieces written before 1930. 1927. So they're in the public domain. And I like to use women writers who were, like, were naturalists, so writing about the natural world. And then from their writing, I find the poetry, and I love doing that. That's my passion, is finding poetry in prosecution.

Mm. Is it a little bit like blackout poetry?

It is, yeah. There's so many names for it. But what I'm doing is. So I'm not actually blacking it out. I'm Just removing words or phrases and placing them into my own kind of like meter and stanzas and things. Yeah. So there's a lot of words, but I call it experimental. I use that term for it, which is. Yeah.

What about that process appeals to you?

I think people often dismiss the beauty of prose. So. Okay, well, good. You got that.

I love that. No need to say more.

Yes, exactly. So especially, like in academic writing, this happened five years ago. When I first started, when I started going back to school, I just found that so many of the academic, scholarly writers were just writing in these gorgeous ideas, but they were buried within, you know, blocks and blocks of prose. And that's where I really started doing. Pulling out pieces. And I just. I imagine you're a writer, you work with writers, and we just sometimes have these. We can just see. You know, I say it's kind of like when I write about how I write, it's like you find a. Like the little glowing ember. You know, there might be this huge flame or the. And that's the whole piece, but then the little glowing embers down below are almost more beautiful than the large. So that's how I see when you write a great sentence or a great phrase or that's how I feel about them. They're embers that should be highlighted.

That's beautiful. I can definitely see that approach in the piece that's in our summer issue. So that. Yeah, that brings us full circle. If people would like to follow you online, where can they find you? Stay in touch.

Yeah. So, yes. So I have just a website. It's my name, deannaodelha.com that is where you can see what I'm writing, the events I'm going to, and you can email me there also. Yes.

Okay, beautiful. Well, thanks a lot for coming on and talking to me.

Thank you for inviting me, Melissa. It was wonderful.

Thanks for stopping by the audio town square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc. Edu WSR Writing is messy, but do it anyway.